Integrating Habitat Availability, Permeability, and Configuration in a Model of Landscape Connectivity: The Contribution of Habitat's Site-to-Site.

The landscape configuration, the permeability of the matrix and the possibility of random dispersal movement of species are essential to robust modeling of the landscape connectivity. To represent this condition, we report a spatial model that integrates graph theory, circuit theory, metrics of habitat availability and includes a temporal aspect by looking into land use changes over time. We identify the possibilities of movement of species site-to-site over time in the landscape, taking into account not only the importance of sites of focal habitats, but also the potential relevance of the matrix for landscape connectivity. The modeling was applied to two rural landscapes, considering three functional groups of mammals with different resource-feeding and habitat requirements. The model indicated multiple and new dispersal non-linear potential routes to each group of mammals, considering its specific requirement to obtain resources and its movement pattern on the agricultural matrix.